In general, when data is transferred from a source database to a target database, the transferred data are serialized before the transfer. The source database and the target database may be located in different nodes of a computer network, different storage components in one location, or a combination thereof. During the serialization process, the source system can read the data stored in the source database in sequence. The source system can then write serialized data to the transfer medium to transfer the data to the target system. The target system can read the transferred data from the transfer medium and deserialize the transferred data. In a deserialization process, the target system can create a target database and write the transferred data in sequence in the target database. In general, the writing sequence used during the deserialization process corresponds to the reading sequence used during the serialization process.